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  “Oh. Shit,” Andrew mutters and drops Mari’s hand.

  “Rosie? What are you doing?”

  Rosie holds out the hen, whose feet swim in the air. “This one’s not laying anymore. She’ll make a nice pot of soup.”

  Mari isn’t sure she can be affronted—technically the chickens are hers, or at least they belong to her property, but since Rosie’s been the one taking care of them all these years it seems she has some sort of right to them, too. Still it would’ve been nice if the woman had asked her first.

  “Oh. I didn’t know you just...took them.”

  Rosie’s smile slips over her face like the growing shadows in the field. She looks at Andrew, her gaze hard and somehow hot. “Chickens that don’t lay aren’t of any use but in the soup pot. Hello, Andrew.”

  “You...know each other?” Mari supposes she shouldn’t be any more surprised by this than she was about the chickens. Rosie, after all, lives in the only other house on this lane and would be Andrew’s only other neighbor.

  “Of course we do. He hasn’t told you?”

  Mari looks at Andrew, whose shoulders have hunched. He’s looking at the ground where the toe of his boot digs into the dirt. “Why would he? You never mentioned him, either, Rosie.”

  The words come out with a faintly accusatory air, and Mari realizes that’s exactly how she meant them to sound. Rosie had known of the tiny cabin in the woods and the man who lived there but hadn’t mentioned it. It was strange, at the least. Slightly sinister, if Mari thought harder about it. As though Rosie knew, but hadn’t wanted her to know.

  Andrew says nothing, not even when Rosie sidles closer and shakes the hen at him. The poor bird is dangling from Rosie’s fist like she’s already killed it. Mari doesn’t want to watch it suffer, slowly suffocating.

  “Kill it, if you mean to,” she says. “But don’t choke it like that.”

  Rosie looks at the chicken, surprised, as if she’s forgotten she held it. She tosses it to the dirt where it lands on its side and scrambles in the dust before getting to its feet and shaking its wings.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you found her,” Rosie says to Andrew. “Like calls to like. Sin to sin. No matter what we try to do. You always were full of sin.”

  Mari tastes sourness, bright and sharp. “Andrew? What’s she talking about?”

  Rosie laughs. Here in the darkening yard it has a slightly maniacal sound to it. “Oh, Mari. Pretty Mariposa. Pretty like a butterfly and just as stupid.”

  “Don’t you call her that.” Andrew’s eyes flash.

  “What’s that? Mariposa? Or stupid.” Rosie’s gaze pierces Mari. “You don’t know about him, do you?”

  “I know all about him,” Mari says stubbornly, though by looking back and forth between Andrew and Rosie, it’s clear she’s clueless. Her chin lifts, though. Her fists clench. She stands her ground. She might not be sure what’s going on, but she certainly won’t stand for being called stupid.

  “Do you? I don’t think you do. Because he didn’t tell you, did he? Of course he didn’t,” Rosie says bitterly. “He wouldn’t. Because if you knew... Well, I thought better of you, Mari. That’s all. You with your nice family and those children. That handsome husband who gives you so much trouble.”

  Mari shakes her head. Earlier the world had threatened to spin out from under her. It tips again now. She digs her heels into the dirt, wishing she was barefoot so she could curl her toes into the earth, too. The solar lights lining the driveway have started to come on, and a light inside the barn she didn’t notice before has now become bright enough in the dusk to make a square of light. All of this means she can clearly see Rosie’s face, twisted in disgust, and Andrew’s look of shame.

  “You don’t know anything about my husband.”

  Rosie laughs again. The sound curdles in Mari’s ears. “Sure I do. How he got into trouble at work. Even an old woman like me can look stuff up on the internet. I know all about how he lost his job, how he slept with that patient of his. How he killed her.”

  “Ryan,” Mari says, “did not kill that woman.”

  Rosie shrugs, unconcerned. “She took her own life, but he was her doctor. Wasn’t he supposed to be helping her? Not driving her to jump in front of a train.”

  “Disturbed people aren’t rational. It’s not anyone’s fault. And certainly not Ryan’s.”

  “Disturbed people. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you? And you,” she says to Andrew, “I guess you’d know a thing or two about it, too. Huh?”

  “Shut up,” Andrew says firmly. “You can just shut up.”

  “That’s a nice way to speak to your mother,” Rosie says, and Mari gasps aloud. Rosie turns. “That’s right. He didn’t tell you, did he?”

  Andrew makes a low noise in his throat. “You’re not my mother.”

  Mari can’t keep up. There are too many words. Emotions. All of this is swirling around her, a tornado of anxiety, but though she’s in the center of it, there’s no calm place to keep her safe.

  “No, I’m only the one who raised you like my own when she wouldn’t. I’m only the one who took care of you when you were sick, made sure you had clothes and food and a roof over your head!” Rosie shakes her fists at him. “I’m only the one who made sure you got your schooling, made sure you learned your Bible! No, I ain’t your mother, praise Jesus, and I thank the good Lord I’m not!”

  Mari steps back. Back again. She’s never liked the sound of raised voices. They make her cringe.

  “Tell her,” Rosie says and spits to the side. “You disgusting, devil-ridden piece of hell-bound filth.”

  “This is the woman who gave you the watch,” Mari says, then louder, “the one who punished you for getting your clothes dirty? Rosie is the one who made you kneel on the rice to pray?”

  He nods once, twice. “She did raise me. She did all of those things. Yes.”

  “And yet you’d run away, like you always did! Always running off into the woods.” Rosie spits to the side, a great glob that glistens in the light from the barn. “And I never knew, did I? Why you were so hell-bent on getting back here, no matter how many times I warned you off. That was your filthy secret, yours and your father’s. Well, then I learned why and I prayed for your soul, Andrew. I prayed the sins of the father had not been visited upon the son, but my prayers went unanswered. Didn’t they?”

  Rosie heaves a great sigh and for the first time sounds more sad than angry. “I tried with you, son, I truly did. But there was too much of your daddy in you, wasn’t there? And too much of your mama, too, I guess. No matter what I did, it was always going to come to this.”

  “Andrew,” Mari says with as much dignity as she can maintain considering she feels as though she might vomit into the dirt from all the stress. “Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

  He turns to her. He takes her hands, an action that makes Rosie spit again. Andrew ignores her. “You want to know about the first time I met you?”

  Mari nods, uncertain of why it’s important to tell her now. Not sure she wants to know, if the look on Andrew’s face is any indication of how he feels about the story. But his fingers squeeze hers, and Mari remembers how Andrew always did his best to keep her safe.

  Andrew draws a long, slow breath. “I was six when you were born. My father had promised me a ride into town with him to go to the hardware store. That’s where he told her—” he jerks his chin at Rosie “—we were going.”

  Mari thinks Rosie will interrupt to complain again, but she says nothing. She’s listening, too. Maybe she doesn’t know the whole story, either.

  “But we didn’t go to town. We came here, to his mother’s house. We came here a lot. Rosie wasn’t supposed to know when we visited, and my dad always made sure I knew not to tell her. But she knew, anyway, I think.”

  “I knew,” Rosie mutters with a shake of her head that sends her gossamer hair floating all around her face. “Oh, yes. I knew about it.”

  The hen has ab